The Lifewriting Professional Article -- Inspiration for Success 2004

Inspiration for Success 2004

Notes from Two Active Affiliates

We prepare for so many things as the season changes at this time of year. We prepare for Thanksgiving, for the winter holidays, for the new year. We buy new calendars in anticipation and we make resolutions. Some of us buy new snow shovels; others look for new swimsuits.

Several Certified Affiliate teachers prepared themselves for a new year of lifewriting by taking part in Soleil Lifestory Network's recent Advanced Lifewriting Week in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Acting on the principle that better writers make better teachers, they brought their own lifestories with them as they switched roles from leader to participant. Two of them share their thoughts with us post-workshop.

Gillian Hewitt, from Burlington, Ontario, came away from the workshop thinking, "Yeah, I can do this!" She says she now has the motivation to continue her own writing and knows that she is on the right track with what she is doing.

"I was surprised by the positive feedback I got, and how important that was for me. I had been prepared for people to tear my writing apart," she says.

She was especially intrigued with Denis' thought of the "Big Idea," --that there is a concept which underlies one's writing that is more universal than the particular story being told. Beyond getting the story down on paper for the record, this larger goal of uncovering and understanding the themes and movements in the bigger story of the story opened the way for a new dimension of creativity.

She also found valuable inspiration for teaching her classes. More than once during the workshop, she found herself thinking, "I should be doing this with my students."

"Teaching is modeling," she says. So she watched Denis' style of teaching closely, and has already implemented some of his approaches in her own groups. "It was good to step back and be a participant again," she concluded. "It was helpful to me as a teacher. I forgot what it was like to have my work taken apart." Many teacher-particpants do find a renewed awareness of how important it is to keep the emphasis on the writing itself, rather than on its contents, or the person, or events described. When a writer remains vulnerable and defensive in the social context of the workshop setting, she can't see her wrting clearly. It's up to the teacher to establish (and re-establish again and again) that the work of the session is the writing not the life.

Robbie ter Kuile returned from the workshop and met with her ongoing writers' group in Tryon, N.C., the very next day. She, too, found Denis' methods worked well with her students.

"I stressed how important it is to keep a writing journal about the experience of writing," she said. Keeping a journal of the writing process is a good way to track what helps you write, and also can be an encouraging record of the progress you are making. Writing about writing is a good tool.

Robbie found that her own writing was raised to a new level by the workshop, and this gives her a confidence boost in dealing with others' writing both as a teacher and an editor. She is now revisiting some of her completed stories and working to add more detail and nuance to them. As a result, she's better able to encourage her students to rewrite, too. Robbie likes Denis' idea of writing as if you are looking through the lens of a camera, which captures all details. She has taken this idea and used it as a pre-writing exercise she practices regularly: while she works out at the gym, she studies the people and setting around her and then writes a warm-up piece on her experience when she returns home.

Robbie found that the workshop in Old Orchard was an opportunity to revive her sense of self as a writer and she has renewed authority in her own workshops as a result.

Each of these Soleil Affiliate teachers were able to experience the workshop on two levels: personally, where they have seen immediate improvement in their own writing, and pedagogically, where they have learned new methods and gained confidence to work with their own students.

That makes for two workshops in one! --a good investment in Success 2004 for these Soleil Lifestory Network Affiliates.

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